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Wednesday, 30 November 2011

I have been AWOL quite a bit lately. But as school is drawing to a close soon The Princess brought home some of her artwork today and I thought I would share. Included in the photos is an interesting self portrait, some beautiful flowers, a pencil drawn owl and a very colourful pillow case!

I hope you like them as much as I do even if I am a bit biased!!!!
Chipper

I found this on Pinterest the other day and I am hoping to attempt to make them for our Thanksgiving table on Thursday. I will have to do a few substitutions as we don't have candy corn :-( but The LOML suggested M&M's instead so that should still work. I will have to stop at the super expensive gourmet candy store to get the mini peanut butter cups but we all LOVE them so we need to have them!

I am making the pies tonight as I have to work on Thursday until lunch. Then I am heading to my mom's to help cook the turkey. For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, have a wonderful day on Thursday!!! For those of you who don't celebrate it, have a wonderful day too :-)

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

I have had a very busy week and an even busier day. I made 8 more notebook covers today for Christmas, including one for myself. I altered the measurements slightly to allow them to accommodate an A5 book or diary if I so choose. The first three helped me perfect my new measurements and then I made the last 5 all at once. A much faster way to sew, but not a good idea if you aren't sure of the pattern!

The cover at the bottom of the picture is for me. I made it using the left over fabric from The Extrovert's baby quilt.

Thursday, 17 November 2011

Ok, so it is homemade but I won't be using it for Christmas :-) While looking on Pinterest for things to make as gifts this year I found this pattern at a very nice blog called The Cottage Home. It is a fabric notepad holder and was very easy to make. I shall definitely be making more! I made this one for my mom for her birthday today. I hope she likes it :-) I think she will. I used one of my fav buttons that I have been hoarding for years on the front (sorry the photo is not great) and the solid red will bring back memories. I wonder if she will remember where it is from? It was a scrap left over from when we made a baby quilt when I was expecting The Extrovert. We used it in everything from the bumper, headboard, curtains, diaper holder and quilt. The Princess and I went fabric shopping yesterday and found the rest of the fabrics. When we walked into the store they had just marked almost all their fat quarters down to half price, YEAH!

Cover

Who would have thought that it would be so difficult to find a notebook to put in the inside! I eventually found one this morning but it had a Disney Fairies cover, opps :-) So I covered it to match. No one will ever know if you don't tell them as my mom won't be reading this... shhhhhh. The top is loose to cover the spirals but still allow it to open easily.

Inside with notebook on the right

Inside with notebook moved out of the way :-)

I stamped on a scrap of twill to make a name plate for the back. It reads 'My Mom'. I really need to get myself a tiny alpha stamp set so that I can stamp out longer messages.

The back

I really like the way it turned out and I can make more quite quickly. If any of you like to sew I would recommend The Cottage Home as the instructions were very easy to follow and the cutting guides were explained properly. I will modify a few parts for my next one as I have an overlocker/serger which will make the finished result neater. But I always follow the pattern the first time :-) Saves on mistakes!

Happy Birthday to my Mom!!!!

Chipper

P.S. Do you like my new music???? Does it feel like Christmas??? :-) If your sound is off, please turn it on or you will be missing out!

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

I sent the early hours of Tuesday looking on Pinterest via my phone while laying in bed relaxing on my day off. There are a few modern gadgets that can be wonderful, especially when it comes to wasting spending time on the world wide web! After some inspirational browsing I felt like finally tackling some Christmas scrapping and I made the pocket page on the previous post followed by the pages below. With the exception on the title page the rest will be completed when I add the photos as I have no idea what will go on each page. It is quite relaxing scrapping this way especially on the smaller size. You may notice that there are occasional gaps in ribbons and cardstock, these will be covered by the photos. A4 card is frustratingly smaller than 8.5in so my metallic cardstock is just a tad too short width ways!

Two of the above pages can even be turned, so who knows how they will turn out! I then spent the afternoon of my day off sorting out all the sites I had found in the morning and pinning to my new board. Who knew one could lose oneself 'pinning' for 5 hours! But it was a lovely way to spend a day to myself :-)

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

I made the first page today for my Christmas album. I also used it to complete the pocket Challenge over at Shimelle's for her Christmas crafting weekend. I used an acetate sheet from a Making Memories journaling book to make my pocket. We are back in the land of HOT Christmases and I REALLY, REALLY miss the thought of snow at Christmas. I am going to use this page to write down some of those thoughts. But first I will wait for it to get really hot as that is probably when I will be most honest!!! I also added some buttons, stickers, punched snowflakes and Cricut snowflakes. Along with some stitching and the obligatory bling, cause it is Christmas after all!

Thanks for the comments left on my previous post. Sometimes gift selecting can be a challenge ... especially when I don't like to just give a gift certificate. I took your advise and looked at Pinterest. I had looked there before but I think I was looking with blinkers on. I never thought to actually click through to the original sites and that they would have even more info. What a few days I have had!

Well I have found some things to make and now I have to go off and price the needed materials. If any of you are interested I have pinned what I have found so far HERE. I shall keep adding to it as I am still looking for more beauty product recipes. Instead of making all of those beauty products, which would kill the budget, I think I might compile them all into a mini book for my teenage niece to make herself after Christmas. Sort of like a recipe book for beauty :-) My favourite find of the day was THIS for the small people in the family. Lets hope I can find some great value fabric, even better if it had a Transformer print!

Monday, 14 November 2011

For those few special people who read my blog :-) I would like to know if any of you could lend me a hand. I am feeling kind of low at the moment and struggling to really get into the Christmas spirit. I am looking to make as many presents as possible this year but have limited time and funds. I had thought to make up a few hampers with some baked goods and other craft things. They can't only contain baked goods or I will be baking like crazy every night for the few days leading up to Christmas! So it is the 'other crafty' things that I need a bit of help with.

Do any of you have any ideas that could make special Christmas gifts for both men and women?? Or have you possibly seen a good blog that you can recommend which has some gift ideas? Any suggestions would be great :-)

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Lets get rebellious and mix dots with stripes!!!!! Funnily enough I have always done that in my scrapping, but it is not something I would do with my clothing! So to begin with I went to my multi coloured paper box and selected a stripe and a matching large dot (which I didn't use). I then found matching spots and stripes in the other colour boxes. I am finding this way of scrapping so much faster and I LOVE having all my papers organised by colour. It was so much quicker finding matching papers and funnily enough NONE of them come from the same collection or company!

Here is the layout I made mixing spots and stripes. Both of the blue papers are patterned with the top one being spotty and the bottom one a chevron. The photos were taken in 2000 so it is about time they got scrapped!

The other day when I was reorganising my embellishments I spent ages sorting all of my buttons and I used a few of them on this layout. There are buttons at the bottom but I only had three of each colour in that size and so I made a bigger embellishment and used a number 2 button as well. I also used a balloon button and some word ones! So I think it is safe to say that I went a little button crazy :-)

Ribbons also came into the mix with the red ric-rac (a variation of a stripe!) and the twine in the buttons and on the balloon. There were a few more photos taken of this birthday tent so I used the scraps to make a second page to keep them all together. I don't think this group of photos needs more than the two pages in the album as they are only a small part of The Extrovert's 2nd birthday. I can't believe how many papers I am using. Some of these I have had for YEARS! The orange on the page is from a 6x12 Cricut paper pad that I got when I bought the original Cricut. That is 5 years ago now! But because I took all of the papers out of the pads they were in and organised them by colour I am now using them. Amazing!

The two pages together. The one of the right made with the scraps.

Sorry about the poor lighting in the photos but it is still early and it is over cast. I am off for a drive to my Uncle's farm today to collect half a cow. I have to tell the butcher how I want it cut up :-) By the end of the day I am going to have one very full freezer LOL But the meat taste sooooo good and it is far cheaper that the supermarket, plus I know exactly where it came from. So I have no idea if I will get my usual dose of Sunday scrapping as I will probably still be bagging meat for the freezer.

Over at Shimelle's she is asking what your favourite size is when it comes to Christmas scrapping. Well to be honest with you I haven't scrapped very many Christmas photos in the past but I want to change that RIGHT NOW! I can however tell you what my favourite scrapping size is ... 8x8. This is currently a very unfashionable size where I am living right now, but I love how fast it comes together. I am not a scrapper who believes that every page must be a masterpiece that takes days to come together (I do however know lots of people who do LOL) and 8x8 pages can look like a 'masterpiece' without taking so much time.

All of my earlier scrapping was given away to the multiple sets of Grandparents and Great-Grandparents that my children are blessed to have who live all around the globe. I can't even remember what most of the albums looked like now. So this Christmas album is going to be for us to keep just like everything else I have scrapped so far this year (no more whole albums for Grandparents, just pages here and there!). When unpacking my stash earlier this year I came across this kit by K&Co's Tim Coffey and put it aside thinking that I really need to use it. So I shall use it for this years Christmas album. It is an unusual size of 8.5x8.5 but that is close enough to my favourite size :-) When I opened the box the album is quite luxurious as the red is flocked!

It came with 20 page inserts (thank goodness for that as I don't think I would find refills anymore for that size!), a pack of Grand Adhesions, a pack of Epoxy stickers, and a pad of 8.5x8.5 patterned papers. So this is a great start for me to add to. I have added some brads, HOTP brad buddies, ribbons and buttons so far to my kit. I am off to get matching Bazzill today and I think I will limit this to a co-ordinating red, green, purple and white/silver. Purple you may be asking? One of the pages has a hint of purple and I think a little of it will contrast nicely. There are also a few blue pages, but this time around I don't want to add too much blue. The page below is one of my favourite from the stack. I think that is because I love traditional Christmas colours and I LOVE candy canes!

Now that I have the basics put together I am ready to go! I am not actually doing Shimelle's class as it isn't really in the budget especially as I have yet to finish the last two. But I will be making a Christmas album and documenting our Christmas this year. It won't contain daily entries, just the events that make Christmas one of my most favourite times of the year!

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

I finally finished the third prompt, well almost. I still have to go find photos and do the finishing touches! I had a friend come over today for some scrapping time and I got so much accomplished! I am glad I tackled this prompt properly and didn't let myself get worried over falling behind. I learnt quite a bit about what I do and don't like and even made a few pages that are NOT my normal style. It is going to be just as interesting finishing them off!

I initially found this quite a challenge as I often use a patterned paper as my background. So to cut them all up at the start was a SHOCK!!!! I struggled in the beginning but once I got in the grove the rest flowed really easily. I was very surprised at the results especially as I was using almost all papers that were very old (only two were even double sided!) and many of them had come from books that I pulled apart when I did my big re-organize.

I started with the papers in the first photo using the multi-colored stripe as my inspiration. I did have to add one more patterned and a few more plain as I went on. Some of the layouts are more embellished than others as I have photos in mind for a few of them and others I will embellish later. I made a total of 10 layouts and 6 cards. The last two cards still need to be finished but I can't find the right stamp for them at the moment.

You will see at the end that I had very few scraps left!!!! And these ALL went in the bin/trash!!!!!!!! I hope these photos go up in order as I am using the Blogger App for iPhone.

Friday, 4 November 2011

Both my boys have joined army cadets in the last few weeks. This weekend is their first camping trip and they are so excited. They used to be in scouts when we lived in Ireland so camping isn't new to them, however this time they are not using a traditional tent. The army here uses a hoochie. What is that you may ask? It is basically a tarp, some string, and a few pegs!

They had to pack their own food for this trip and each of them carries a small stove to cook on. Just in case they can't get it working all of their essential food can be eaten cold!

I wonder if they have settled in ok tonight as it was dark when they would have arrived.